Dualism and diversity: a comparative analysis of unemployment in Italy

Employment systems in the industrialised countries have undergone far-reaching changes since the economic crisis of the 1970s. Industrial restructuring and the delocalisation of manufacturing towards less developed countries, the spread of new technologies, the expansion of service sector employment and changes in labour market policies and state welfare have all transformed the division of labour, radically altering the “welfare capitalism” that developed during the post-war boom. These temporal variations have always been accompanied by equally profound disparities in the spatial articulation of unemployment. One might say that in both the Centre-North and the South of Italy, the evidence suggests that we have entered neither a society of “mass unemployment” nor one characterised by the “end of work”. Many unemployed individuals do not now have previous experience of regular work, nor do they have specific expectations in relation to their future work position. In the past, moments of high unemployment were interpreted as signs of critical conjunctures, with dramatic effects for the unemployed and their families, but rarely leaving indelible traces on their social and economic prospects. Today, this combination has powerful effects across the whole of Southern society, from child poverty to the weight of the informal economy, the fragility of consumer demand and the weakness of welfare services.